No, it’s not the vice-chancellor’s new motor. If you see a gleaming Aston Martin parked on campus it probably means that the Tories’ higher education spokesman is paying a visit. Before he was reshuffled into the job, Charles Hendry - or should that be “Hendry, Charles Hendry” - was the party’s youth champion and he tells a nice tale of how his Aston helped him break the ice with a group of inmates at a young offenders’ institution. Of course, it is little surprise that criminals would be interested in meeting a man with a sports car, but Mr Hendry wanted to talk to them about what they planned to do once they had served their sentence, having no qualifications to speak of. His suggestion? “You could always become an MP.”